Howling Legion (Skinners, Book 2) (33 page)

“Cole?”

He turned at the sound of his name and spotted a familiar face among the frazzled cops. “Officer Stanze!”

Stanze jogged toward Cole with his gun drawn. “Is Paige around here?” the officer asked. “These things look just like the one I sold her.”

“She’s with the big one that got away.”

“Huh?”

“When did you get here?” Cole asked.

“Just now. Damn near every unit in the city will be here in another minute or two.”

Stanze suddenly straightened his arms and legs into the classic firing stance. He pulled his trigger once before Cole got a look at what he was shooting at.

The Mongrel darted from one shadow to another like a six-foot eel slithering through shallow water. Cole slapped his hand beneath Stanze’s arms so his next bullet tunneled into a wall across the street.

“Hey!” Stanze said. “I just saw another one of those things!”

A low growl rolled through the air, followed by the scrape of claws against pavement. A Half Breed jumped over an empty police car, its eyes wide and glassy, front legs outstretched and teeth bared. Just as it cleared the top of its arc, the Half Breed was intercepted by the Mongrel that had just crossed the street. Both furry bodies met with a thud and slammed to the ground.

“There’s some of them!” another cop shouted. “Fire!”

Bullets filled the air, chipping the street and punching into their targets. Cole tried to think of a way to save the Mongrel, but wasn’t about to dive into the middle of all that lead. Fortunately, it seemed that none of the bullets were doing much damage. Ben came along to sink his teeth into the Half Breed’s thigh, and then both burrowers dragged the wretch into the nearest alley.

“What the hell is going on here?” Stanze asked him. “Damn near the whole force is here instead of on patrol. Shit’s getting busted up. Wild animals are all over the place. Now I heard there’s another riot down on the other side of the highway.”

“More animals?” Cole asked.

Stanze shook his head. “Just a bunch of assholes who see this kind of general craziness as a license to steal,” he said with an exasperated sigh. “Wait! Where do you think you’re going?”

Cole had turned away and taken several steps toward the Cavalier. “I need to get to Paige,” he said.

“Get in my cruiser,” Stanze said. “If you know where to look for her, I’ll get you there a hell of a lot quicker than you could on yer own.” Cole hesitated, and Stanze grabbed his arm. “Seems like you both know what these things are, so don’t try to tell me any different. I wanna help, so let me help.”

“You want to help? Fine.” Raising his voice and looking toward something creeping through a shadow, he said, “Those weasel things are running straight for her! Maybe you should follow them.”

One of the Mongrels within earshot got the hint and scampered into the open just long enough to be spotted.

Cole pointed and said, “Right there!”

“Aren’t you coming with me?” Stanze asked.

Cole held up his hands and replied, “Hey, you’re the guys with the guns. All I got is this stick.”

Stanze slapped him on the shoulder. “Smart man. If you get ahold of her, find out where she is and tell any of these cops to radio me.” With that, Stanze jogged to his car, and he and another officer piled in to pursue the Mongrels.

Even though the cops would just be led somewhere out of harm’s way, Cole had to admire their willingness to charge after them. He got to the Cav and was about to turn the key in the ignition when he realized someone was there with him. Kayla had taken a form that was almost human, but was wiry enough to be nearly absorbed by all the crap piled in the backseat. A portion of her body was camouflaged by the same type of substance that had been soaked into Paige’s hooded sweatshirt, and the smell had given her away.

“Ben and the others must really trust you,” she said. “We’ve already lost three of our number clearing most of the Half Breeds from this area.”

“Yeah? Paige just got carried off to Lord knows where. Think you can track her down?”

“The stench of Full Bloods is so powerful that they might as well have spotlights strapped to their backs.”

“More than one?” Seeing Kayla nod into the rearview mirror, Cole grunted, “Shit! Right now I need the one that’s got Paige.”

“Ben and I can take you to her.”

“Perfect,” Cole said, starting the car. His hand was poised over the gear shift when he stopped before taking the Cav out of Park.

Kayla leaned forward and placed a hand on his headrest. “What’s the matter? I said I’ll take you to her. After all we’ve done, you don’t trust us?”

“No, it’s not that. I can’t leave yet.”

“Why?”

“How many of these cops have been hurt?”

She looked through the windows on either side and said, “Several, but at least they’re still alive.”

“And what about guys like that one?” Cole asked, pointing to a group of officers clustered around a large man lying on the sidewalk. “How long before they start to change?”

Kayla drew in a quick hissing breath. “You’re right. We must end the lives of the badly wounded before they can continue the cycle.”

“Or, you can hand me that tackle box on the floor back there and I can end it another way.” When Kayla handed
over the medical kit, Cole told her, “You go find Paige. Take as many of the others as you can and try to help her. Ben can lead me to you.”

“If even one Full Blood is to be killed, we’ll need all the fighters we can get.”

“Do you know how to help these wounded cops without killing them?” he asked.

After a slight pause, Kayla replied, “No.”

“Then let me do it. In case you haven’t noticed, they took out a few Half Breeds on their own. I won’t just drive away and let them die for it.”

“Do what you must here, but be quick. Ben will stay behind and take you to the fight.” With that, Kayla left the car. She’d shifted into an agile, vaguely feline form before all four of her paws touched the street, then she faded away.

Cole rummaged through the medical kit until he found the bundle of turkey basters and some eye drop bottles marked HB.

The street looked like a war zone, but was quieter than it had been a few minutes ago. Cars were parked at odd angles, some of them on the sidewalk, while others were badly damaged or completely destroyed. Shots crackled from random spots in the distance. Men and women in uniform scrambled to find each other and talk on radios while dealing with civilians or wounded who lay stretched out on the ground.

As far as Cole could tell, there were only a few Half Breeds in the vicinity. He couldn’t see any of them, but heard barks and snarls nearby. One wild howl was ended by a chorus of shotgun blasts. He hurried to the fallen cop he’d spotted from his car and was stopped by a burly man in a black jumpsuit and a heavy bulletproof vest with a badge sewn into the spot where a breast pocket should be.

“Whoa, back up,” the big guy warned.

Despite the rifle in the cop’s hands, Cole kept moving. “That man’s hurt,” he said. “I can help him before he gets worse.”

The guy with the rifle shook his head. “More paramedics are on the way. Go back to your home and let us do our job.”

“I just need to get a look at the wound,” he insisted. “I’m a doctor, and having him lying flat or on his side or with his head elevated could make the difference between whether or not he lives long enough for the paramedics to help.”

The words had flown out of him in a way that reminded him of a religious zealot speaking in tongues. They were a mix of some things he’d heard on TV and in a couple classes he’d gotten at Red Cross class, tied together with a dash of bullshit. The recipe was just good enough for the heavily armed man to let him get a little closer.

The wounded cop was hurt badly, but he was strong enough to hang on. His uniform was ripped open at the waist and shredded all the way down to the knee. When the man saw his fellow officer escort Cole to him, he opened his eyes wider and said, “I think it’s got rabies or something. My leg feels li—like it’s burning.”

Making a loose fist around an eyedropper, Cole leaned forward until his hand was over the wound, then tightened his fist to spray some liquid from the dropper onto the wound. “Keep his head up,” he said. “It’ll help him stay awake.”

The man on the sidewalk made a sound as if someone had tightened a belt around his injury. He held onto his breath for a moment and then let it out as if the invisible belt had been loosened. “Burning stopped,” he sighed. Cole bent down to hear him better.

“I don’t know what you did, but thanks, man,” the cop said. The frantic edge to his expression had been dulled and his muscles no longer looked as if every last one of them was pulled taut.

From there, Cole made the rounds to anyone else he could find who looked wounded badly enough to be in danger of becoming a Half Breed. According to Paige, little nips or cuts didn’t matter, but if a wound looked just shy of fatal, the Half Breed infection would take root.

Somewhere along the line he was joined by the woman he’d helped when he and Paige first arrived in Kansas City. The female officer had received some treatment for the minor wounds she’d gotten, and now insisted on escorting him to all the other wounded she could find. When he’d treated the
worst cases, he handed her one of the larger turkey basters and said, “Squirt this stuff onto as many more wounds as you can find. It’ll keep them sterile until they can be stitched up.”

“Where are you going?” she asked.

Another ambulance had wailed down the street and was rolling into the middle of the commotion. “The pros are here, so I’ll give you room to work.”

“You did some great work yourself. Got a name?”

Fortunately, he was spared the task of deciding if he should give his real name or come up with a fake one. As the paramedics spread out to help the wounded, the freshest batch of cops barked for all civilians to clear the scene. Cole followed the order, wondering if it had been a mistake to distribute the solution. It had only taken a few minutes, but his gut told him he’d wasted too much time.

Paige was still out there with that Full Blood.

She could be lying wounded somewhere waiting for him.

Maybe she was already dead.

As soon as he got to the Cav and pulled open the driver’s door, a Mongrel poked his head out from under the vehicle’s battered back end.

“You’ve got a fan club,” Ben said.

“Any more Half Breeds around here?”

“Not for a mile or so.”

“Can you find Paige and that Full Blood?”

“Most of us went to lend your partner a hand. I can take you to her.”

Cole turned his key in the ignition. “Then let’s go.”

The Mongrel skittered ahead like a shadowy mirage.

Paige hung onto her weapons with a grip that was nearly tight enough to drive the thorns in the handles all the way through the tops of her hands. Liam’s back was wide as a bull’s, and it took nearly everything she had to keep from being thrown.

The city rushed by on all sides. Pavement flowed under her like a whitewater current. Buildings, cars, people, streetlights, glowing neon, brake lights, more buildings, more cars, all of it flew past in a stream that overloaded her senses and caused her stomach to clench. When Liam leapt over something in his path, she flopped onto her side and cried out as the tendons in her shoulders and wrists threatened to snap. She tried to flatten herself against Liam’s back but was almost thrown off again as the Full Blood dug its claws into the pavement and came to a stop.

Paige slid along Liam’s back, hit his shoulders and felt her body swing into the air. Her left hand came away from her weapon, but her right remained locked. In fact, even when she dropped back down to bump against Liam’s side, her wounded arm held fast. The savage bite from the Half Breed had already healed to a set of jagged scratches. But while she didn’t feel any pain in that limb, she couldn’t feel much of anything else either.

They were on an interstate.

She didn’t know which interstate, but the road was wider, elevated, and filled with a steady stream of cars. Liam wanted to
pick the sickle from his back with his teeth, but Paige plucked the weapon free and drove it back into a thick section of meat at the base of his neck. He tried to shake her off, forcing her to push the weapon in as far as it could go and hang on.

The Full Blood reared up then and made a sound like a train being derailed. His front paws flailed in the air as Paige fought to stay in place. Her feet dangled more than a yard off the pavement as she used every muscle she could to jerk the machete downward like a giant lever embedded behind his shoulder. The crude blade tore through the meat in his back, causing the massive werewolf to drop back to all fours, angle his head to one side, and sink his front claws into the pavement. A honking car sped by to clip Liam’s leg just as he turned to nip at her. Paige swung around and out of his reach, and was just quick enough to avoid a second snapping attempt.

Liam roared and ran straight down one lane of the interstate. Several cars skidded to avoid him, but the Full Blood leaned into them and used his shoulder to knock them aside. Then, like a bear using the trunk of a tree to scratch an itch, he angled his back toward the cars to try and rid himself of his unwanted rider.

Paige kept her hands wrapped around the weapon grips but couldn’t use them as anything but handles to keep from dropping onto the road. When Liam lowered his shoulder to slam that half of his body into a bus, she barely managed to pull her lower body up and tuck it in so her legs wouldn’t be mashed against steel. Once she’d adjusted her weight on that side, Liam lowered his head and kicked his back legs up in an attempt to fling her toward an oncoming truck. Her left hand slipped from the handle of her sickle, but her right fist remained locked so tightly that she wondered if she would ever be able to open her fist again.

Then Liam did the one thing she’d been praying he wouldn’t do. He stopped in the middle of the road and rolled onto his back.

Paige reacted without thinking, bringing her knees up to her chest, placing her feet against the Full Blood and pushing herself away. Liam hit the cement and rolled back and
forth as if putting out a fire. Headlights from cars that had stopped or were wrecked around and behind them bathed the two combatants in illumination from several angles. The moment Paige whipped around to get a look at the Full Blood, she was forced to dodge a set of claws that were longer than short swords. She raised her right arm, but her weapon only blocked a fraction of the blow. Claws raked through her hardened flesh as though scraping against brick, the impact of the swing knocking her flat against the pavement.

More cars honked and crashed into each other, but Paige couldn’t see any of it. Her face rested against the concrete and she was too tired to lift it. The Full Blood snapped at a pair of cars that honked wildly as they drove by, straightening his upper body and shifting effortlessly to stand upon two legs.

Reaching over his shoulder, Liam grabbed at what seemed a large thorn protruding from his back. His thick fingers brushed against the sickle, which brought something resembling a smile to his face. When he got ahold of the weapon and pulled it out, he released a breath that might have been lodged in his throat since the blade first hit home. He was about to toss it away when Paige threw the machete in her right hand with enough inhuman force to plant it solidly within the gray spot on Liam’s side.

He reacted to the blow as if she’d stabbed a raw nerve. Craning his head all the way back, he roared and allowed the sickle to slip from his hand. Paige, certain that he was about to flee, scooped up the weapon and got to Liam before the pained howl had completely left his throat. When he lowered his head to run along the shoulder of the interstate, she’d already grabbed a handful of fur in her powerful right fist and used the machete to pull herself up and back onto him. The Full Blood was no longer interested in flipping cars. He ran along the highway for the quickest couple of miles Paige had ever experienced before launching himself up and over the guardrail.

They sailed over a canopy of branches and leaves, but Paige could tell they weren’t anywhere near a park. The air smelled of smoke and rusted steel. The ground beneath Liam’s feet crunched with loose gravel or broken cement as
he brushed against a few large things to try and knock her off. Failing that, he came to a stop. His chest heaved like a powerful engine on the verge of overheating. Just as Paige recognized one of the nearby things as a boxcar, Liam threw himself against it. She was barely able to dismount with her weapons in hand before being squashed.

“You’re accomplishing nothing, Skinner,” Liam said while shifting into his upright form. “If I don’t kill you now, I’ll only kill you later.”

They were in a train yard. Several darkened warehouses were lined up just beyond a couple sets of tracks. Behind them Paige saw smaller sheds and rows of empty boxcars, all a stone’s throw from the Missouri River. She didn’t know exactly how far Liam had taken her, but could no longer hear police sirens.

Liam squatted down with his knees bent and his elbows resting on them. He eyed her with a little bit of everything showing upon his face: exhilaration, lust, hunger, even a good deal of curiosity. “If the Mongrels are here, that means this city is way out of your control. Or did you have something to do with that?”

She didn’t answer his question. Instead, she tried not to think about the pain flooding her body while she opened and closed her right fist to get some blood pumping through it.

Liam wrinkled his nose and said, “I already know you deal with the leeches, so I’m surprised you didn’t recruit them to help you. But the Nymar don’t fight for their territory any longer, do they? They hide inside their noisy taverns and frilly clothes, whining endlessly about how hard they’ve got it. Maybe I’ll show them what to do with their power. Wouldn’t that be funny?”

“You know what I think is funny?” Paige sneered. “A big bad wolf like you doing so much talking when there’s a fight to finish.”

“Just picking your brain,” Liam mused as he casually waggled his long, clawed fingers. “I suppose I can do that just as well when the wretches tear your head open.”

Before Paige could charge the Full Blood head-on, Liam leapt up and back. His hands touched the side of a crane used
for loading oversized cargo containers, then he grabbed onto the steel beams and climbed toward the top of the crane. It began to groan and shift under his weight, so he stopped halfway up and raised his face to the black sky.

Paige recognized the howl from when she and Cole had been driving downtown. Being so close to its source was another experience altogether. The sound shook her on a primordial level. Instincts came to the surface that made her want to run until her legs would no longer carry her.

But she wasn’t the only one to feel that urge. Half Breeds emerged from the nearby warehouses and from beneath the dirty sheds bordering some of the older sets of tracks. There were at least ten of them scraping up from their pits, hungry and eager to stretch their newly formed muscles. Just when things looked like they couldn’t get any worse, stragglers from downtown howled from other parts of the city. The first of those creatures to arrive showed plenty of wear and tear from tangling with cops, Mongrels, and Skinners, but didn’t show any signs of slowing down.

Not only could Paige feel those demonic snarls grating inside her ears, but she felt a rumble beneath her feet. She tried to loosen up her right arm in preparation for a fight, but the limb felt too thick and heavy to be of much use. Standing alone in that train yard, she swallowed the regrets that rose to the back of her throat and got comfortable with what remained.

She’d had a good run.

As the Half Breeds circled, their crazed, once-human eyes focused upon her. Then every set of thin, pointed ears perked up as another voice demanded to be heard.

It was a howl, but compared to those she’d heard earlier, this was musical. The new voice didn’t need to compete with Liam’s. It was a pure, single note that wove through everything else in the simple, unstoppable way a river might cut through a mountain. Liam took notice and shifted on his perch to look toward the row of low buildings along the river to the north.

A second Full Blood stood on top of a warehouse at the far edge of the train yard. Its head was pointed straight up
and both of its massive arms were stretched out, with fingers splayed as if it was preparing to battle anything the gods dared to send his way.

For a few moments the Half Breeds seemed confused. Then one of them started running toward the other Full Blood. Before it had gone more than twenty yards, the rest of the wretches followed suit. They bolted straight past the crane where Liam snarled down at them and raced for the opposite end of the yard. Once all of the Half Breeds had gathered at the foot of their new master, that Full Blood unleashed the full fury of its teeth and claws upon them.

What followed was an ugly display of nature’s most unsympathetic rule. The newly arrived Full Blood ripped the first Half Breed apart and sent both pieces flying against the side of the building behind him. The rest of the leaner werewolves attacked in a frenzied battle for survival, simply because they knew it was too late to try and escape.

“To hell with you, Randolph!” Liam shouted from on high. “I don’t need them!” Shifting his eyes to Paige, he dropped from the crane and scrambled toward her. His eyes were unnaturally clear. Every one of his features had become angular and rougher around the edges, as if the last drop of humanity inside of him had dried up.

The rumbling beneath Paige’s feet grew stronger, but she was too tired to run from it. Instead, she tightened her fists around her weapons and waited for Liam to come to her. As the rumbling passed directly under her and moved on ahead, she realized that something else was going to get to the Full Blood first.

Four lanky arms exploded from the dirt to grab Liam’s feet, the earth rising in large chunks that sent Paige tumbling to one side. The Full Blood shook one leg free, but lost his momentum and came tumbling down. Another pair of burrowers grabbed Liam’s hands and yanked them down, and when he pulled them from the dirt, they sank their short, wide teeth into him.

In the distance, Half Breeds yelped and snarled, ripping at Randolph’s hide before he tore them to shreds.

Directly in front of Paige, Liam struggled to climb to his
feet as Mongrels swarmed at him from the ground. Most of the burrowers attempted to pull him down just to keep him from moving, but one had climbed up and onto the Full Blood’s powerful frame to gnaw on the side of his neck.

Wincing as dozens of teeth and claws tried to get through his thick layers of fur, Liam looked at Paige and growled, “Do your new allies know you’ll be hunting them next?”

Paige got to her feet and searched the writhing contingent of Mongrels for an opening to strike.

“Humans who survive a wound from our kind become wretches,” Liam said as he grabbed one of the burrowers by the neck. “Mongrels surviving the same wound become Full Blood. Did you think about that when you sought their help?”

The moment Liam tossed the Mongrel he’d grabbed, Paige ran toward him. She used every bit of anger, frustration, even desperation she felt to try and regain a connection that she seemed to have lost. The thorns in the handle of her right-handed weapon had practically been swallowed up when the thing shifted into its crude, vaguely machetelike shape. The remaining nubs were sharp, but barely sharp enough to puncture the hardening skin of her damaged hand. Once her grip tightened enough to do the job, all the emotional fire she’d ignited allowed her to will the handle of her machete to peel back and expose the tooth she’d attached to it when it had been her more familiar sickle. The tooth emerged like a Nymar’s fang, and carried the same message: blood was going to be spilled.

The sickle blade snagged in Liam’s fur, where it became tangled amid a thick layer of spent bullets. Paige pulled herself forward to add even more power when she drove the modified end of her other weapon straight into the tuft of gray fur on Liam’s side. As soon as the blow landed, she could feel the tooth on her weapon scrape against the one that had snapped off of Cole’s spear. Liam batted one Mongrel away as if flicking an insect, bellowing a roar that quickly deteriorated to a pained wheeze. When he tried to jump away, he was held in place by the Mongrels that had remained in the dirt.

He bent down to swipe at the Mongrels holding his feet, but was dropped to his knees when Paige pushed her weapon in even farther. The more she strained her right arm, the more the dark shading beneath her skin faded away. Before the ink could fully burn off, she twisted and pulled to do as much damage as possible.